8 October 1855 – 14 October 1855

On river. — Flocks of tree sparrows by river, slightly warbling. Hear a song sparrow sing. See apparently white-throated sparrows hopping under covert of the button-bushes. Found my boat yester- day full of willow leaves after the rain. See no tor- toises now on the rocks and boards. It is too cold.

A young man has just shown me a small duck which he shot in the river from my boat. I thought it a blue-winged teal, but it has no distinct beauty-spot. The bill broad and, I should say from remembrance, bluish-black, as are the legs and feet, not red or yellow or flesh-color, webbed thus: Above black and brown with no bright colors or distinct white; neck brown beneath and breast; secondaries pale-bluish, tipped with white; a little greenish perhaps on the scapulars. Mr. William Allen, now here, tells me that when, some years ago, a stream near his house in East Bridge- water, emptying into the Taunton River, was drained, he found a plant on the bottom very similar to a sponge —of the same form and color —and say six inches wide.

P. M. — Up Assabet. The leaves fallen apparently last night now lie thick on the water next the shore, concealing it, — fleets of dry boats, blown with a rustling sound.’ I see a painted tortoise still out on shore. Three of his back scales are partly turned up and show fresh black ones ready beneath. When I try to draw these scales off they tear first in my hand. They are covered, as are all the posterior ones, with a thick shaggy muddy fleece of moss (?). No wonder they must shed their scales to get rid of this. And now I see that the six main anterior scales have already been shed. They are fresh black and bare of moss. Apparently no fresh scales on the sternum. Is not this the only way they get rid of the moss, etc., which adhere to them ? Carried home a couple of rails which I fished out of the bottom of the river and left on the bank to dry about three weeks ago. One was a chestnut which I have noticed for some years on the bottom of the Assa- bet, just above the spring on the east side, in a deep hole. It looked as if it had been there a hundred years. It was so heavy that C. and I had as much as we could do to lift it, covered with mud, on to the high bank. It was scarcely lighter to-day, and I amused myself with asking several to lift one half of it after I had sawed it in two. They failed at first, not being pre- pared to find it so heavy, though they could easily lift it afterward. It was a regular segment of a log, and though the thin edge was comparatively firm and solid, the sap-wood on the broad and rounded side, now that it had been lying in the air, was quite spongy and had opened into numerous great chinks, five eighths of an inch wide by an inch deep. The whole was of a rusty brown externally, having imbibed some iron from the water. When split up it was of a dark blue black, if split parallel with the layers, or alternately black and light brown, if split across them. ‘There were concentric circles of black, as you looked at the end, coinciding nearly with the circles of pores, perhaps one sixteenth of an inch wide. When you looked at these on the side of a stick split across the circles, they reminded you of a striped waistcoat or sheepskin. But after being exposed to the air a little while, the whole turned to an almost uniform pale slate-color,' the light brown turning slate and the dark stripes also paling into slate. It had a strong dye-stuff-like scent, ete. The other was a round oak stick, and, though it looked almost as old as the first, was quite sound even to the bark, and evidently quite recent comparatively, though full as heavy. The wood had acquired no peculiar color. Some farmers load their wood with gunpowder to punish thieves. There’s no danger that mine will be loaded. Pieces of both of these sank at once in a pail of water.’

P. M. — To Conantum.

Some sparrow-like birds with yellow on rump flitting about our wood-pile. One flies up against the house and alights on the window-sill within a foot of me inside. Black bill and feet, yellow rump, brown above, yellowish-brown on head, cream-colored chin, two white bars on wings, tail black, edged with white, — the yellow-rump warbler or myrtle-bird without doubt. They fly to several windows, though it is not cold. P. M. — Up Assabet. The muskrats eat a good many clams now and leave their pearly shells open on the shore. Sometimes I find a little one which they have brought ashore in the night but left entire and alive. The green-rayed ones, — are they not a peculiar light blue within? I still see the Emys insculpta coupled, the upper holding with its claws under the edge of the lower shell.